Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Sour grapes   /sˈaʊər greɪps/   Listen
noun
Grape  n.  
1.
(Bot.) A well-known edible berry growing in pendent clusters or bunches on the grapevine. The berries are smooth-skinned, have a juicy pulp, and are cultivated in great quantities for table use and for making wine and raisins.
2.
(Bot.) The plant which bears this fruit; the grapevine.
3.
(Man.) A mangy tumor on the leg of a horse.
4.
(Mil.) Grapeshot.
Grape borer. (Zool.) See Vine borer.
Grape curculio (Zool.), a minute black weevil (Craponius inaequalis) which in the larval state eats the interior of grapes.
Grape flower, or
Grape hyacinth (Bot.), a liliaceous plant (Muscari racemosum) with small blue globular flowers in a dense raceme.
Grape fungus (Bot.), a fungus (Oidium Tuckeri) on grapevines; vine mildew.
Grape hopper (Zool.), a small yellow and red hemipterous insect, often very injurious to the leaves of the grapevine.
Grape moth (Zool.), a small moth (Eudemis botrana), which in the larval state eats the interior of grapes, and often binds them together with silk.
Grape of a cannon, the cascabel or knob at the breech.
Grape sugar. See Glucose.
Grape worm (Zool.), the larva of the grape moth.
Sour grapes, things which persons affect to despise because they can not possess them; in allusion to AEsop's fable of the fox and the grapes.


adjective
Sour  adj.  (compar. sourer; superl. sourest)  
1.
Having an acid or sharp, biting taste, like vinegar, and the juices of most unripe fruits; acid; tart. "All sour things, as vinegar, provoke appetite."
2.
Changed, as by keeping, so as to be acid, rancid, or musty, turned.
3.
Disagreeable; unpleasant; hence; cross; crabbed; peevish; morose; as, a man of a sour temper; a sour reply. "A sour countenance." "He was a scholar... Lofty and sour to them that loved him not, But to those men that sought him sweet as summer."
4.
Afflictive; painful. "Sour adversity."
5.
Cold and unproductive; as, sour land; a sour marsh.
Sour dock (Bot.), sorrel.
Sour gourd (Bot.), the gourdlike fruit Adansonia Gregorii, and Adansonia digitata; also, either of the trees bearing this fruit. See Adansonia.
Sour grapes. See under Grape.
Sour gum (Bot.) See Turelo.
Sour plum (Bot.), the edible acid fruit of an Australian tree (Owenia venosa); also, the tree itself, which furnished a hard reddish wood used by wheelwrights.
Synonyms: Acid; sharp; tart; acetous; acetose; harsh; acrimonious; crabbed; currish; peevish.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar




"Sour grapes" Quotes from Famous Books



... gratification, as when the boastful boy, after having his "conceit taken out of him" by his mates, boasts of his school, profession, town or country. This is often called "sublimation". Sometimes, though denied, it remains insistent, and "defense mechanisms" have to be devised to keep it down; the "sour grapes" mechanism is an example, which may be used not only when the "grapes" are physically out of reach but also when for any reason we decide to ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... contemporaries that it is very rarely we can see anything that they do not see. It is not unjust that the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the children, for the children committed the sins when in the persons of their fathers; they ate the sour grapes before they were born: true, they have forgotten the pleasure now, but so has a man with a sick headache forgotten the pleasure of ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... it, always having to prove it. The successes came, and always he let Paul know about them, watched Paul's face like a cat. And Paul would squirm, and sneer, and tell Dan that in the end it was brains that would pay off. Sour grapes, of course. If Paul had ever squared off to him again, man to man, they might have had it over with. But Paul just seemed content to sit and quietly ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... "Sour grapes," whispered a pretty miss of sixteen to her elder sister, as they stood apart from the others and watched the effect ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... Jiddah, which is the port of Mecca, and our nearest point to it," said the commander. "Though thousands of pilgrims are landed there every year on their way to obey the injunction of Mohammed, there is nothing there to see; and it is not a case of sour grapes." ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic


Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com